I know I’m dating myself here, but does anyone but me remember MacGyver? For those of you who are uninitiated in TV of the late 80’s and early 90’s, he was the dude you called in if your butt was in the biggest of slings. MacGyver wasn’t just a hard-core, beat-‘em-up super hero. He was also a scientist, a thinker and an ingeniously creative problem solver. Now that I have given you that introduction, get someone somewhere to help you find the classics for goodness sakes!
The reason that I bring him up (other than to shame you into admitting you remember him) is to point out that we therapists are hired to be the big guns of the psychological world. Clients, in essence, ask us to wave our magic wands, use our greater preponderance of knowledge, and MacGyver out the particularly persnickety problems in their lives. Though this is helpful for our career longevity, I’m sorry to say that it is not entirely practical. Asking someone else to get rid of the parts of yourself that you experience as “other” will not work. Rather, ask him or her how to help you integrate those symptoms into your life in a holistic way. This is not a cue to put up with unpleasant symptoms. Rather, it is an invitation to situate them into a context that demonstrates them to be what they more appropriately are: important communications from inside you that want to be examined, not simply excised.
Here are a few tips to make the point:
- I see dead people: Symptoms (particularly somatic ones like panic attacks) can seem like persistent ghosts intent on jumping out to say “boo” when we least want to see them. Eventually, the ghost doesn’t need to jump out at all; you’re so afraid of being afraid or out of control that you set the necessary physiological context for feeling terrified and panicky all on your own. Bummer. However, the panic attacks most likely started to address a situation in which your body felt you needed to pay extra attention. This may have been because some part of your body or your emotional personhood was, at some point under attack. This can happen through car crashes, rapes or other personal attacks, or even simply through repeated emotional trauma. Though this is a blog for another day, individuals in our society are consistently encouraged to cut off from their bodies and ‘manage’ its weight, looks, health, and sexuality from a one-off stance. This is exacerbated by the tendency for well-meaning health professionals (including we psychotherapists) to prescribe pills in isolation to whip the body-mind connection back into working order. Now doesn’t that sound silly? While psychiatric drugs can be very helpful or even essential to some individuals’ well-being, it must be a dual-pronged approach. The only way to find a way back from the boogie monsters of panic and anxiety is to reintegrate the felt experience with the mind-spirit.
- Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean: Let’s talk for a moment about how we get our way in relationships. Usually it’s one of these ways: power, dependency, or sexuality. Of course, there are other creative means to drive your relationships, but this tends to be the triumvirate of favorite methods. Here’s a secret though. You probably don’t see yours. And, most people don’t really want to confront the internal dialog that helps them reduce anxiety by engaging in their favorite method. This is because you’re running on a blueprint that got loaded onto your hard drive a long time ago. It’s auto-pilot and you and I both go looking for folks who have a measure of fit to our own style. This goes awry in therapy when folks want to fix the problems without examining the emotional infrastructures that support their choices. They would prefer to do the work without getting dirty. But, in order to clean up the biggest messes one must sometimes get a hand in the dust. It’s normal, and very brave. When you can not only change the behaviors, but regard yourself with forgiveness and love for doing the best you can with the tools you had at the time, you’re ready for a change. You’re integrating the thoughts and the behavioral responses.
- Something’s Always Wrong: What if change in and of itself is not something you feel ready to do? Often, it makes sense to avoid changing behaviors or circumstances if some part of you really believes that this equates to failure or giving up too soon. Many of the battered women with whom I work are not gluttons for punishment. Sometimes, they don’t hate themselves, or even have terribly low self-esteem. Rather, they have a commitment to the principles of marriage or loyalty, and they would rather stay in a relationship that hurts than view themselves as someone who quits when the going gets tough. Far from the stance of helplessness with which most people regard battered women, this is a rather interesting way to represent bravery and commitment. The work in therapy comes from allowing the construction of new definitions of success, loyalty to self, and loving boundaries. What problems in your own life do you complain about and wrestle with but are secretly ambivalent about changing?
Your partner in healing, Holly
If you would like to schedule an appointment, or a free 15-minute phone consultation please email holly@lotustherapycenter.com or call 407.913.4988.
